


home run

by kittenscully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s08e16 Three Words, F/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 08, but still definitely msr, doggett's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: They haven’t got a thing in common, him and Mulder, other than a responsibility to protect and serve one woman in particular, and maybe, if the files are right, a history of staring into dark corners and searching for the kids they didn’t manage to save.“Agent Mulder,” he repeats carefully. “I don’t think you’re a man anyone could replace.”[in which John gets involved in something that is none of his business.]
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 12
Kudos: 105





	home run

When the phone rings, he’s halfway through his second beer, the uneventful Nationals game on the TV echoing through the empty house. He isn’t watching, but he always leaves the volume turned up anyway.

“Hello?”

“Agent Doggett.” Dana’s voice is quiet, paced. 

His first instinct is to be surprised that she doesn’t sound happier. His second instinct is to mind his own business.

“Agent Scully,” he greets her, always with half a smile. There’s affection, he thinks, in their stubborn formality. How it keeps on coming back, even after he’s carried her away from fresh graves and mobs with her face in his shoulder and her hands plastered to her belly like a secret.

“I can’t come in to work tomorrow,” she says.

“That’s just fine,” he tells her simply, instead of mentioning Mulder’s return. He doesn’t want to pry. 

“I’ll be back full time soon,” she assures him, as if she, in her third trimester and only newly resigned to staying alive, has some obligation to field work. 

The neutrality in her voice isn’t quite right. John mutes the television, his skin crawling as the air goes dead quiet except for the catch in her breathing over the line.

“Well, alright,” he says easily. “There’s no hurry.”

“No,” she insists. “I’ll be back.”

It takes a long time for silence to really wear on a person, but once it does, it’s never comforting again.

“Alright,” he repeats. Narrows his eyes, peering into the darkness of the next room over. “Is Agent Mulder all settled in?”

A pause. In the shadowed doorway, he can almost make out a shape, small and alone. He wonders if Dana’s luck will turn sour again, if she'll start seeing it, too, in a few months. If maybe, she already does. He wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy, much less his best friend. 

“I wouldn’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” He leans forward warily, elbow resting on his knee. 

“He, um…” her breath hitches, so softly he almost misses it. “He wanted some space.” 

“Some space,” he echoes. It figures, he supposes, that a living in a coffin would result in some claustrophobia. But surely, two isn’t a crowd. Surely, five feet and change of earnest, pregnant woman couldn’t be suffocating. “Mulder wanted some space.”

“I went home,” Dana says, and means her apartment, even though they both know she hasn’t really lived there for months. He hears a faint sniffle. “He didn’t want me there.”

“Okay,” John says, even though it isn’t. “Okay, Dana. D’you need anything?” 

“Goodnight, Agent Doggett.” 

There’s a click as the line goes dead. He sets down the portable, stares blankly as a player he doesn’t recognize swings and misses onscreen. She hadn’t answered him, but he hadn’t really expected her to be forthcoming. He can’t give her what she needs anyway, and they both know that, too.

Months before, he’d wondered briefly if Mulder was some kind of a mind reader. There had even been a time that he’d figured he had to be, to get as close as he must’ve to a woman like Dana. She holds everything close to her chest like playing poker, doesn’t show her hand for anything except a bluff. Voices her thoughts as if placing bets, eyes shifty, ready to bolt or shut down quick if her luck turns bad, as it has tonight. 

Clearly, Mulder isn’t a mind reader. Or, he might be, but John likes to give friends of friends the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t think Dana is the type to stake it all on a man who would leave her out alone in the cold, knowing full well what it’d do to her. 

He downs the rest of his beer, thinks of the pointless ways people hurt each other. Thinks of how people get in the way of their own healing, like he has himself for so many years. Three agents with over a decade of casualties behind them, from children to parents to themselves.

Two empty apartments and an empty house, all of them occupied. None of them homes. 

The second batter strikes out. 

The pieces don’t line up, no matter how he looks at it. Something must be missing. Even if Mulder can’t read minds, he’s got seven years experience in reading her body language. And Dana might bluff enough to call it a hobby, but she sure as hell isn’t good at it. 

His first instinct is to chase down the answer like a bloodhound on a scent. His second is to mind his own business. 

Dana had said _he doesn’t want me there_. She hadn’t cried on the phone, but he’s followed her close behind for long enough to know that the dam broke the second she hung up. He wasn’t ever meant to be the man who followed her, and he’s been ready to give it up since he started, bow out of a place that was never his to begin with. 

Onscreen, the third batter strikes out. 

He turns the TV off, tosses his beer bottle and grabs his jacket on his way to the door. Mulder’s address is scrawled on a post-it on his dashboard.

In the rearview mirror, he sees it — the shape, just for a moment. He can’t remember a time when his own son didn’t haunt him, or a time when he didn’t chase the ghost. 

*

“Agent Mulder,” he says, as the door swings open. “It’s –”

“Agent Doggett.” Mulder sounds tired, worn thinner than stray mutt. “My replacement.”

That isn’t right. He blinks, takes in the dark circles under the other man’s eyes, the latent hostility. They haven’t got a thing in common, him and Mulder, other than a responsibility to protect and serve one woman in particular, and maybe, if the files are right, a history of staring into dark corners and searching for the kids they didn’t manage to save.

“Agent Mulder,” he repeats carefully. “I don’t think you’re a man anyone could replace.”

“What do you want?”

He swallows. He wants to be sure that Mulder didn’t snap at Dana that way, to let him know that she couldn’t take it if he did. He wants to tell him what’s happened while he’s been gone, from the thick ropey scar at the back of Dana’s neck to her mother’s very real fear for her life when he was found dead.

“I just wanna talk,” he says, holding up his hands in a position of surrender. 

*

On Mulder’s TV, the Nationals game drones on. Neither of them sits down, and neither of them watches, the discomfort louder than the background noise. 

“I heard she got you a desk,” Mulder says, deadpan.

“I heard you never got _her_ a desk.” It doesn’t sound like a joke, even though he’s pretty sure he meant it to.

“We already had one.” He says it as if it’s obvious, and John frowns. “We didn’t need a second.”

There’s a beat as he thinks this through. He isn’t inclined to like or trust this man, and nothing Dana’s told him has swayed his opinion. But then again, he doesn’t know much of anything about the two of them, and how their partnership worked. He only knows the aftermath of their codependency, the shrapnel left behind. The way Dana’s eyes water when she tries to fill his shoes, her shaky hands clasped over her chest like pressure on a gunshot wound. The way she’s lived since he came home in a coffin, a shell of the shell she was when they met, nothing more than a host for her unborn child.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” Mulder sighs. He spins the baseball in his hand restlessly, stares into the darkness of his kitchen as if there’s something there to see. 

John’s never had trouble expressing his thoughts. He wonders if Dana’s wearing off on him, or if the constant nagging reminder that this is absolutely none of his business is the real issue.

He’d just been so sure he’d get Dana back, even if it meant giving up his place at her side.

“I know this is none of my business,” he says slowly. “But I think that D – that Agent Scully oughta be here, with you.”

“You’re right,” Mulder says coolly. “It’s none of your business.”

Every inch of the apartment is almost too clean, as if it’s been scrubbed with steel wool and bleach. He can picture it, Dana bent over with a wince in the back of her throat, working at a nonexistent stain on the coffee table. Her spare hand cradling her belly as she rubs away any trace of herself on his things.

His business or not, the twinge in his chest isn’t something he can ignore.

“She did it all herself, you know,” he says, keeping his voice as level as he can. “She kept this place ready for you with her own money and hard work. And I’m no professional at that, but I can tell you it wasn’t half this clean when I first visited.”

He doesn’t know Mulder well enough to read the look on his face, but he can read the discomfort and the confusion in the way he shifts, flipping the baseball from one hand to the other. In normal circumstances, talking to his partner’s significant other wouldn’t feel like an interrogation. But the circumstances are hardly normal, and besides, he’s more comfortable in an interrogation than he is with intimacy.

“It is clean,” Mulder replies. His eyes are as shifty as Dana’s, and as haunted as John’s own. “It feels different than it did.”

“It feels lived in,” John says steadily. 

“What do you mean?”

“I believe I just said what I mean, Agent Mulder.”

Mulder meets his gaze for a moment, and John is struck, suddenly, with the full force of the other man’s pain. That could be the missing piece, more trauma to add to an already bloody history. He doesn’t look away. 

There are unspoken secrets that aren’t his to tell, things he’s seen Dana go through that he’ll take to his grave. But the things she hasn’t said, the things she must’ve expected Mulder to know already — those could be the missing pieces, too.

“I’m not sure if you know this, but when I joined the X-Files, I was the agent in charge of the search effort to find you,” John says. There are so many stories he could tell, so many places to go from here. 

“Well, you did it,” Mulder drones. “Maybe they’ll give you a promotion. Let you back out of the basement.”

“The truth is, Agent Mulder, I don’t much care what happens to me,” he says, and is struck by how much he means it. “I’ve already fought my battles, and lost most of ‘em.” 

He looks away, through the archway towards the kitchen. No matter where he is, he can always spot the ghost. After so many years, it’s almost a welcome sight. Any empty house can feel comfortable when the same haunting follows wherever you go.

“So have I.” Mulder chuckles humorlessly. 

“I don’t think you’re right about that,” John says. “I can't imagine what you’ve suffered. But I’m pretty sure that you’re missin’ the win right in front of you.” 

“And they call me cryptic,” Mulder scoffs. “I don’t know what world you’re living in, Doggett, but alien abduction followed by a vacation six feet under and then a return to a partner who’s moved on without you isn't much of a win.”

And there it is, the empty spot in the center of the puzzle. The keystone piece, missing.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” John tells him, candidly. 

“By all means, go on,” Mulder snarks. “I’ve had years of practice at being told just how wrong I am.”

“The morning after I met Agent Scully, I came to your apartment, to look through your records.” He knows what story to tell, now. “She was already here.”

There’s a frown creasing Mulder’s forehead. He’s still gazing into the darkness, but John can tell that he’s listening. 

“She was asleep, Mulder,” he says, dropping the extra formality. “She was fast asleep, in your bed, with a shirt I can only assume was yours right next to her.” 

Mulder’s eyes shift back to his. 

“I didn’t know her much at all, then. But anyone could see she’d been crying.” He doesn’t mention how often she’s cried since then. That isn’t his secret to tell. But Mulder needs to know about this one time, and all he can do is hope that she’ll forgive him. “I didn’t know she was pregnant then, either. But once I learned, it all made sense. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind what you meant to her.”

For the first time, real emotion passes over Mulder’s face. He looks younger, a little kinder, walls stripped away just for a moment, his expression vulnerable and almost hopeful. 

With a lump in his throat, John wonders if he might’ve just caught a glimpse of the man Dana’s been looking for. If he’s the ghost that follows her, already, lurking behind every door, framed by the night sky in every window. Not the son she hasn’t lost, not the sister which she has, but a man haunted enough to haunt the both of them. 

“I said this place feels lived in because it is lived in,” John continues. “She’s lived in it.”

“You don’t understand,” Mulder says quietly, shaking his head as if he’s trying to talk himself down from something. “The things she’s been through…”

“What part of this aren’t you getting?” The words are coming out firmer now, more hostile. He can’t help it. “You said she’s moved on without you, but you’re wrong. She hasn’t moved an inch. You’re the one moving on, and you’re leavin’ her by herself, eight months pregnant, after she raised you from the dead with her own two hands.”

“You don’t know the things that have been done to her because of me.” Mulder’s face is starting to crumple, his voice raising. “I’m only putting her at risk, I’ve only ever made her miserable. She _needs_ to move on.” 

“With all due respect, Agent Mulder,” John says, keeping his voice level with effort. “That isn’t your choice to make.”

Shocked into silence, Mulder blinks at him, his mouth moving without a sound. On the TV, John hears the commentator declare the final out before the seventh inning stretch, watches the cut to commercials. 

*

There are so many pieces he’s left out, things that Mulder should know. Dana’s body stone heavy in his arms, her sobs shaking them both, clinging to her belly like dead weight as he ushers her away from what they thought was a corpse. Dana’s voice too steady, telling him that there are prescription drugs behind her bathroom mirror that she shouldn’t be trusted to keep within arm’s reach. Dana’s head on Mulder’s chest, her tears soaking through his hospital gown, her face more like death than his. 

His first instinct is to pull up a chair and tell Mulder everything. His second instinct is to mind his own business. 

He reckons he’s overstepped more than enough for one night. 

“I’ll see myself out,” he says. 

With his hand on the doorknob, he hears footsteps behind him. 

“I sent her home for her own good,” Mulder says, sounding almost desperate, his eyes glossy. “I only would’ve hurt her more.” 

They both know he’s got nothing to prove, not in this moment, with only the two of them face to face. Logically, then, John can be sure that he’s only trying to convince himself. 

“You didn’t send her home, Agent Mulder,” he says, opening the door. The light from the hallway cuts cleanly through the darkness, wipes away the ghost like bleach on a stain. “You only sent her away.”

*

When the phone rings, he’s sipping on a third beer, the Nationals game in its unexpected tenth inning. He still isn’t watching, except maybe out of the corner of his eye. Anyone, he figures, can appreciate a good last minute comeback. 

“Hello?”

“Agent Doggett,” Dana greets him.

He half smiles cautiously. She sounds more alive than he’s ever heard her. 

“Agent Scully,” he replies, doesn’t want to pry. Doesn’t hope too far ahead. “You watchin’ the game?”

“Yes,” she says, and then: “Mulder loves baseball.”

He bites down on the inside of his cheek, does his best not to react, even as his smile turns into a genuine grin. 

“Is he settling in alright?”

A pause. The sound of her mumbling, a sweet, girlish laugh that he’s never heard before. He wonders if he’s ever really had the pleasure of meeting Dana Scully before now.

“He says yes,” she announces, just a little bit breathless.

“And how about you?” He asks, just to be sure. 

There’s another beat, a soft sigh over the line. The roar of applause on his TV, and the matching roar in the background from Dana’s living room. In the shadows of the stairwell, he spots the shape, just like always. It doesn’t bother him so much as before. 

“I’m home,” she says, finally. 

“I’m glad,” John says, and means it wholeheartedly. “D’you need anything?”

“Not anymore.” 

“Well, alright then.”

He’s always had a knack for helping people, just as long as he trusts his gut, even though he still can’t figure out how to help himself. The least he can do is be in her corner. There’s no doubt in his mind that she’ll always be in his. 

“John?” Dana says, and he hums in response, struck by the use of his first name, the quiet honesty in her voice. “Thank you.”

His first instinct is to ask if Mulder told her about his visit, to apologize for not asking permission first. His second instinct is to mind his own business. 

“You have a good night, Dana,” he tells her sincerely. He can’t think of anyone who deserves happiness more. 

“You too.”

The line goes dead, and he sets down the portable, lifts his beer to no one but the ghost in the corner. Toasts the three of them. An empty house and two apartments, one of them scrubbed clean but for the lingering guilt, and the other a little more like home. 

On the TV, the spectators cheer again, a home run with the bases loaded in the bottom of the tenth. Talk about a last minute comeback. 

**Author's Note:**

> I mentioned this AU I have where Doggett confronts Mulder on not being there for Scully after his return.....and people seemed interested in me writing it. so here it is!


End file.
